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FISK MEMORIAL CHAPEL. 



Am^rtratt Mtsatnttarg KBBacmtxon, 

287 Fourth Avenue, New York, N. Y. 



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piSK univ:rrsity aft:^r thirty-nin:^ Y:eARS. 




BY REV. J. G. MERRILL, D.D., PRESIDENT. 

Fisk University was founded by 
the American Missionary Associ- 
ation in 1866. It was cradled in 
the army barracks that had been 
abandoned by the Federal army. 
It received its name from Gen. 
Clinton B. Fisk, who, at the time, 
was stationed at Nashville to close 
out United States Government af- 
fairs. At the very first, Chaplain 
Cravath, who was the President of 
Fisk for more than twenty-five 
years, announced that the insti- 
tution would afford to the colored 
}^outh all the education they would 
show themselves able to acquire 
and make use of. This policy time 
has amply vindicated. 

It soon became evident that the 
institution must find a new and per- 
manent site. Fort Gillam, in the 
northwestern part of the city, was the location chosen. It is a com- 
manding position and with its thirty-five acres of land affords an 
ideal campus. But how were the buildings to be erected ? Prof. 
George E. White solved the problem by sending out a company of 
Jubilee Singers, as he christened them. They sang in all the northern 
States, in the British Isles, and on the continent of Europe. They 
were gone seven years and brought back to Fisk $150,000, with which 
Jubilee Hall was builded, the balance due on the campus was paid, 
and the institution gained an international reputation. '■■ 

Since these early days the school has moved forward with an even, 
constant growth. There are now upon its campus eight substantial, 
nearly all, commodious buildings. Its property is valued at $350,000. 
It has an incipient endowment of about $60,000. It catalogues over 
500 students, of all grades, from the primary school, which is utilized 
as a "practice" school for the Normal Department, to the College De- 
partment, which last year enrolled nearly 100. 

During its existence Fisk has sent out nearly 500 graduates from 
its Normal and College Departments. It keeps a close tally of its 



REV. JAMES G. MERRILL, D.D. 
President of Fisk University. 



FISK UNIVERSITY AFTER THIRTY-NINE YEARS. 











•'--•■^iiiji *^* • 




JUBILEE HALL. 

Alumni, and is able to show that its graduates are working along the 
lines that they have been educated to follow to a larger extent than is 
true of institutions of like grade, north or south, where the student 
body is made up of Caucasians. The reason for this is apparent to 
those who recognize the inevitable working of the law of supply and 
demand. The vocations for which the Normal and College courses fit 
are not overcrowded in the case of the colored graduate, the demand 
for his services is far in excess of the supply, and must be for years 
to come. The social conditions of the South, separating the Negro 
from the Caucasian, afford the Negro an opportunity among his own 
that would have been denied him had he to come in competition with 
the educated white man. As teacher, doctor, lawyer, dentist, drug- 
gist, business man, educated farmer and clergyman, he cannot fail to 
secure a livelihood, and an opportunity to become a leader with large 
following. To read each year the revised roster of Fisk graduates is 
ample justification of the far-sighted statesmanship of its founders. 
The curriculum of Fisk is such that its graduates from the College 



FISK UNIVERSITY AFTER THIRTY-NINE YEARS. 

Department are admitted as post-graduates at Yale and Harvard with- 
out examination, and, in more instances than one, those who have en- 
tered the professional schools of Harvard and Yale have led their 
classes. The chief aim at Fisk, however, is not scholarship. Manhood 
is its goal. Christian men and women are its product. It is the pur- 
pose of the Faculty to send forth no one who is unworthy of confi- 
dence or incapacitated to be a leader of those who have never had the 
opportunities afforded at Fisk. 

As looking toward this end Fisk University has not to any large 
extent adopted the elective system. It recognizes the fact that the 
student body has not the advantage of scholastic training in high 
grade preparatory schools, and does not come from homes where the 




THE CLASS OF ig04 AND PROFS. TALLEY AND WATERMAN. 



parents can decide upon the courses of study best adapted to their 
sons and daughters. The curriculum is, in the main, prescribed by 
the Faculty, and is arranged so as to give a well-balanced training 
such as will afford a secure foundation for professional study, particu- 
larly for the teacher. 

Those College students who purpose to become teachers, moreover, 
have an opportunity in Junior year to take a course in Pedagogy and 
practice-teaching instead of German. 

As the years go by the Normal Department is made stronger. It 



FISK UNIVERSITY AFTER THIRTY-NINE YEARS. 

now covers five years instead of four, peculiar emphasis having been 
laid upon the study of English, and each year the examinations in 
this department are more rigid. 

Drill under the eye of the principal of the Pedagogical school as- 
sists the young practice-teacher in handling classes and imparting 
instruction. 

Quite naturally, the number of graduates in this department is 
fewer than when the requirements were less, but the fact that the 
Negro common school in the South constantly demands a higher 



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PEDAGOGICAL SCHOOL. 



grade of teachers has determined the Faculty of Fisk to meet these 
demands. 

The Music Department might be expected to be prominent at 
Fisk. The Jubilee Singers gave the school so wide and so enviable a 
reputation that applications come from all over the South to enter 
upon the study of music at Fisk. 

It is the policy of the University to require of each music pupil 
the pursuit of two literary studies in addition to music. The theory 



FISK UNIVERSITY AFTER THIRTY-NINE YEARS. 

The ministers educated at Fisk University are found in all evan- 
gelical denominations. They hold no second place in their churches. 
A writer in The Outlook, the son of its editor in-chief, after a care- 
ful study of church conditions in the South, wrote that he found 
no better organized church than one presided over by a graduate of 
Fisk, who was also an honor man at Yale Divinity School, 

But perhaps the most pervasive and beneficient influence exerted 
by Fisk University has come through the refined Christian homes 
presided over by liberally- educated men and women Quite naturally 




INDUSTRIAL BUILDING AND GYMNASIUM. 
Erected through a legacy by Mr. Howard, of Nashville, and gift of Deacon A. J. Burrell, 

those who are associated in college and school life form life alliances, 
and greatly does Fisk rejoice in a son whose rank as a scholar 
along sociological lines has world-wide recognition ; in another who is 
dean of an important department in a well-known university; in 
others, who, as clergymen, have a large following and wield wide influ- 
ence ; in others who, as physicians, have a large practice, lucrative, 
and, what is far better, on a high moral plane ; of others who have 
■won success as lawyers; but even more than these are they who. 



FISK UNIVERSITY AFTER THIRTY-NINE YEARS. 

like the gifted wife of the Principal of Tuskegee, are at the head of 
Christian homes. In no other way than through such homes is the 
welfare of the Negro of America to be secured. 

In the light of the life of the university it is not to be wondered 
at that a leading Southern gentleman, the pastor of the largest South- 
ern Presbyterian church of Nashville, said, at the funeral of Presi- 
dent Cravath, our first President, "If the spirit which breathed in 
President Cravath, lived in his work, and is represented by you who 
constitute Fisk University, obtained throughout the South and North, 
there would be no race question." 




•'AS GOOD AS NEW. 



FISK UNIVERSITY AFTER THIRTY-NINE YEARS. 



Fisk has been maintained chiefly by the American Missionary 
Association, an organization supported by the Congregationalists, 
whose policy is thoroughly unsectarian and interdenominational. It 
is by means of this organization that nearly all the buildings 
have been erected and each year funds been granted to support the 
university. It has appropriated more than a million of dollars for the 
university. 

Of late years the money received from tuition has increased, until 
it is now nearly enough to pay one quarter of the cost of the school 
department. The boarding department, with its nearly three hundred 





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A GRADUATES SCHOOL. 



boarders, is sufficient to pay for itself, and before the late rise in pro- 
visions afforded a slight revenue to the institution. 

The incipient endowment adds slightly to the income of the 
school, but more than one-third of the expenses connected with the 
school must be solicited each year at the North. As at present man- 
aged, the university could be carried on independent of the American 
Missionary Association did it have an endowment of $300,000. 
If the Association were released from the support of its oldest and 
largest institution, it would be able to devote more to its younger 
growing schools. 

Were the salaries at Fisk equal to those paid for like work in 
similar institutions in the North, the above-named endowment would 



FISK UNIVERSITY AFTER THIRTY-NINE YEARS. 

at least be one-third too small, while a greatly needed enlargement of 
the work of the university would make an endowment of a million 
dollars none too large. 

The Negro problem is the perplexing question of the hour. In 
the solution of this problem Fisk University has done a large share. 
A map of the United States dotted by the names of places where 
Fisk graduates are working is an interesting sociological study. 
They are found most densely congregated where they are most 
needed. The occupation of the graduates is significant. 

Here it will be seen that the vocation which is most potent in 




THE DOTS SHOW WHERE FISK GRADUATES ARE WORKING. 



shaping communities is most often entered upon. It is estimated that 
from 15,000 to 20,000 colored youth are yearly taught by those who 
have received their equipment to teach at Fisk University. All 
through the Southland are schools typed, as far as it is possible so to 
do, after the alma mater that has given their ideals to the teachers of 
these schools both in city and country. 

Of late a large number of the young men have become physicians 
or dentists and druggists. To scatter through the South, Christian 
men of high ideals in any or all of these vocations promises the 
best things possible for the people whom they serve — a promise which 
has had large fulfillment. 



FISK UNIVERSITY AFTER THIRTY-NINE YEARS. 

course, those who are trained for college in the " Preparatory Depart- 
ment " fit into the college the better. 

Quite naturally, the life of a student at Fisk is a very strenuous 
one. He is usually poor — often very poor. He works from October 
to the middle of June at his books and the tasks assigned him by the 
university. His vacation is, as one of the boys has said, a " worka- 
tion." He is found as a porter on the sleeping or dining-car, a waiter 
at a summer resort, working at some trade that he has knowledge of, 
teaching school — in fact, anything that will afford him an honest 
penny. To secure these "jobs" he usually has to incur the expense 
of going North, 'as wages are exceeding low for unskilled labor in the 
South. For this reason many a time a student at Fisk does not see 




STUDENTS AT MORNING CHAPEL EXERCISES, LIVINGSTONE HALL, 



his parents for five, six, and even seven years, a hardship peculiarly 
trying to a race whose family ties are strong. Nothing is more de- 
lightful than the graduating days, when the pride of the parents, in 
view of the son's honor, is matched by the devoted attention of the 
child to parents who, in form and feature, are at so great a remove 
from the young graduate. The receptiveness and docility of the 
student body is a constant inspiration to the teacher. As in every 
school, there are those who are slow to learn, and not a few have to 
give up in despair before the course is finished. Many of these, how- 
ever, remain long enough to catch the spirit of the institution and go 
out to do good work among their people. The university is dissatis- 



FISK UNIVERSITY AFTER THIRTY-NINE YEARS. 

fied with its work unless each graduate has a distinct and avowed 
purpose to bless his race. The last Sunday before Commencement is 
Senior Sunday, and, almost without exception, each graduate tells of 
the plan he has formulated to carry out the underlying principle of 
the school, " Not to be ministered unto but to minister," and that 
other motto of the university, oftenest on the lips of President 
Cravath, " Overcome evil with good." 

Dr. Washington Gladden, who was Commencement orator in 1903, 
after listening to the six representatives of a college class of twenty- 
two, wrote : " I believe in the absolute necessity of the higher educa- 





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COLLEGE Y. M. C. A. 



tion for the Negro ; and I believe that the higher education which he 
receives should be the highest education— that the equipment which 
we give to the leaders of the Negro race should be the best possible. 
Their scholars should be good scholars ; their doctors should be just 
as well trained as white doctors ; their lawyers should know just as 
much law and just as much logic and just as much history and politi- 
cal science as white lawyers know ; their preachers should be men of 
power and their journalists men of breadth. The kind of men that 
Fisk is sending out will meet this demand, as I believe. I have cer- 
tainly never heard a better Commencement programme in any college 
than the one I listened to last summer in Nashville." 



FISK UNIVERSITY AFTER THIRTY-NINE YEARS. 

entirely from the North. Graduates of Amherst, Ann Arbor, Carl- 
ton, Columbia, Dartmouth, Harvard, Holyoke, Oberlin, Smith, Syra- 
cuse, Wellesley, Wesleyan, Yale and other well-known colleges have 
been upon the Faculty. These teachers have, almost without excep- 
tion, been actuated by a missionary and philanthropic spirit which 
has held subordinate the matter of emolument or the securing of re- 
nown. To shape character has been, with them, a higher aim than to 
train the intellect. To keep, at the highest point attainable, the intel- 
lectual life of the school is a goal never lost sight of during the nine 
and a half months of school year, but never day, nor night, is the 
moral and religious well-being of the student body ignored, the rather 
is it strenuously but lovingly sought after. 




LIVINGSTONE HALL. 



Of late there has been added to the Faculty a re-enforcement made 
up of Fisk's own graduates, men of ability and scholastic acquire- 
ments, who have made it evident that they possess the loftiest ideals 
of their alma mater. 

The student body of Fisk comes from a score and a half of States. 
It is probably lighter in color than most Negro schools. Its dark- 
skinned students, however, often excel. Owing to the music depart- 
ment, the young women are slightly in excess of the young men in 
point of numbers. As the years go by the young people, more fre- 
quently than formerly, enter the advanced classes. The secondary 
schools in the South are doing better work year by year, although, of 



FISK UNIVERSITY AFTER THIRTY-NINE YEARS. 

that the training of the intellect is a sine qua non is true in music as 
in every other work. 

The course laid down in the Music Department requires eight 
years of study. There are, as might be expected, very few who com- 
plete it. Those who do are in instant demand. Ten times as many 
as are here fitted for places would be readily and profitably employed. 
In connection with this department, recitals are given twice each 
month under the leadership of the head of the Department. 

A choir of seventy-five voices has a weekly drill in sacred music 
for the use of public worship in the Sabbath services and the study of 




COLLEGE CHOIR. 



the works of the great masters. They have taken up the " Messiah," 
"Elijah," "Stabat Mater," "St. Paul," and for the last two years have 
done hard work in connection with Coleridge Taylor's "Hiawatha." 

Nearly every year noted musicians from the North, at a nominal 
cost, afford the University the benefit of recitals upon the piano and 
organ. He is a dull pupil who spends much time in the musical 
atmosphere of Fisk University without rising above the frivolous, not 
to say degrading, music that is popular North as well as South. 

The teaching force of the institution has in the past been almost. 



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